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Ahead of a visit to Montreal, where the singer-song-writer will accept Amnesty International’s highest honour for activism, Keys talks politics and poutine with

By Amanda Ghazale Aziz for Chatelaine

For Alicia Keys, a 15-time Grammy winner, former host of The Voice and proud wearer of no makeup, being an artist and an activist are one in the same. In 2003, she co-founded Keep a Child a Alive, a non-profit devoted to providing treatment to kids and families affected by HIV in India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. And in 2014 she started the We Are Here Movement, a coalition of organizations that encourages youth to fight for equality, racial justice and environmental consciousness, among other causes.

Group 63 members decided to try an AmnesTEA on the Victoria Day weekend. Johann booked the gym at Trinity St Paul’s church in Toronto and made sure the congregation were invited to drop by after the church service.

Johann, Dawn and Marilyn baked treats, put the coffee and kettle on, and laid out petitions, postcards and baskets for donations. Success! About 63 people signed a postcard demanding a fair trial for Huseyin Celil - a Canadian detained in China. The group also added their names to another action urging Canada to abolish the Designated Country of Origin list to allow refugee claimants a hearing based on their unique circumstance. We left with about $63 in donations and an invitation to make this a more regular event!

Junior Mandoko, far left, and Merryl David-Ismayil, front centre with some of their French students

By Merryl David-Ismayil

It all started with an experiment at Glendon College (York University), the unique bilingual College in Toronto. After realizing that numerous English-speaking students do not want to take some courses in French because their level in this language would not permit them to get the “A” they need to continue, Meryll David-Ismayil, who teaches Political Science there and who is also part of the Board of Directors of the Amnesty International Toronto Organization (AITO), decided to launch some free French language classes on Human Rights. No mark, no stress: just the pleasure to learn and speak about human rights… while practicing French!

On April 22nd, 2017, a day accompanied with beautiful weather, the group One Fire invited Amnesty activists from the Business & Human Rights/Indigenous Rights Team to join them for a concert at Christie Pits Park in Toronto. Under the message “We Are One”, artists came together in this collective movement to deliver music based on topics such as peace, love, and freedom. The focus of the event was Earth Day 2017, and between musical guests, Amnesty International volunteers were given time at the mic to speak to the audience.

The tragic news of the brutal murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist renowned for his fearless reporting of the drug war wreaking havoc across Mexico, has sent shockwaves through the country.

His journalism was particularly well-known in his home town of Culiacán, in Sinaloa. There, thousands of people are virtual hostages of a war between ruthless drug cartels and a government that is at best, unable to protect its people and, at worse, in collusion with those it claims to be fighting against.

Javier was gunned down by unidentified men near the office of Riodoce, the weekly newspaper he founded and one of the few in the state still reporting on the wave of deaths sweeping through the area.

On the eve of the final Senate committee hearings on Bill C-16 on Gender Identity, Amnesty’s women’s rights campaigner Jackie Hansen caught up with violence against women advocate and LGBTI social worker Dillon Black of the Ottawa Coalition to end Violence Against Women (OCTEVAW), to talk about the significance of Bill C-16 in promoting gender equality. Dillon sits on the Minister of the Status of Women to the Government of Canada’s Advisory Council to Help Shape the Federal Strategy on Gender-Based Violence.

By Jackie Hansen, Major Campaigns and Women’s Rights Campaigner, Amnesty International Canada

In early April, the courageous journalists at Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that over a hundred men suspected of being gay had been abducted, tortured, and some killed in a coordinated government campaign in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. Men who are released from detention are not safe; they may face honour killings by family members. In response, Chechen officials denied the existence of gay men in Chechnya, and denied they had ordered ‘preventative mopping up’ of people considered to be undesirable.

People worldwide were outraged. How could this be happening? What could be done to protect the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities in Chechnya from discrimination and violence? What were we doing and could we do more?